1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to anchors for mooring vessels, platforms or other objects floating in a body of water over a mooring bed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Anchors are very essential equipment for properly equipped marine vessels or the like that float in lakes, rivers and oceans. In many situations, the availability of suitable anchors can make the difference between survival or loss of a vessel or other object.
Mooring beds can vary markedly from one location to another, e.g., the bed may be sand, mud, rock, coral, grass, weed, etc. Some anchors hold well in one type of bottom, but fail to hold adequately in other types. For example, grass covered ocean or lake bottoms consistently present serious holding problems to many type anchors because of the tendency of the anchors to slide over such area rather than bury and hold. Hence, designers of anchors seek to make their anchors capable of providing suitable holding power with as many different type mooring beds as possible. Two popular type anchors are the so-called "Danforth" and "CQR" anchors. The former is a "stockless" anchor having a pair of flukes which pivot together upon the end of the shank. The latter is a "plow" anchor having a single, plow-shaped fluke pivoted to the end of the shank. Each of these anchor types exhibit different holding power with different type mooring beds, i.e., neither of them is a universal anchor for all type mooring beds.
Unless an anchor is used with a permanently moored object, e.g., a drilling rig, the ease with which an anchor can be stowed and the space required therefor is another critical factor in the designing of acceptable anchors. Thus, while large mushroom anchors are extensively used for permanent moorings, they are generally unsuitable for use as ground tackle aboard yachts, freighters and like marine vessels. To assist in the handling of anchors, a variety of special types of devices have been developed to aid in their stowage, e.g., see U.S. Pat. No. 4,248,171.
The problems of stowage and handling of anchors are influenced by the weight of the anchor relative to the holding power it will provide. Thus, if two different type anchors each exhibited substantially equal holding power statistics, the lighter of the two would be favored by most users, unless the cost of the lighter type is significantly higher than the heavier type. One recently developed anchor type, the so-called "Bruce" anchor, is alleged to exhibit high holding power per unit weight and to work well over a wide variety of mooring beds, e.g., see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,777,695 and 4,397,256.
Another requirement of acceptable anchors is their ability to consistently assume an attitude when cast from a vessel onto the mooring bed that will ensure the anchor will penetrate and bury itself into such bed. Historically, in order to orient an anchor so that its fluke or equivalent burying portion would dig into the mooring bed, cross pieces, known as "stocks", were integrated into the anchors, e.g., as in the so-called "Navy" type anchors. As anchor designing has advanced, use of stocks have been eliminated as in the "Danforth" and "Bruce" type anchors or replaced by some other form of self-righting component, e.g., see U.S. Pat. No. 3,828,497. In any event, an acceptable anchor design must have the ability when cast onto a mooring bed to orient itself so that it will bury rather than slide over the bed surface.
The present invention offers a new anchor design that successfully addresses the various requirements of acceptable anchors as discussed above.